In what way will the negative voting system or NOTA impact the elections?

Sasanka K. Krishnatraya

The Hon’ble Supreme court of India responded well to the appeal made by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and on 27th September’2013 gave a significant verdict saying that for a vibrant democracy the voters should have the right to negative voting by rejecting all candidates in fray by exercising the option of “None of the above (NOTA)” in EVMs and Ballot papers. Certainly it is going to make a positive impact on the Election process.

As the political parties will never like their candidates to be rejected by people in elections and hence they will take utmost care in selection of their candidates.

Also, democracy to survive, proper governance of the country is extremely important need which can be achieved by selection of candidates of high moral and ethical values.

Political parties need to respect the will of the people by providing candidature to sound party members. Candidates with criminal cases can now easily be denied by the people in negative voting system.

The Election Commission of India has also made it clear that negative voting system is not going to make any confusion in the minds of the people and declaring the candidates winner in the elections.

It has been implemented in India since 2013 and also in the Lok-Sabha Election 2019, this system of Negative voting or NOTA(None Of The Above) option will be there in the EVMs(Electronic Voting Machines).

In 2014 General Election about 60 lakhs voters chose the NOTA option which represented 1.1% of the total number of votes cast. Hope, this time around NOTA will have positive impact on the entire Election process.